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CfP: HOTCUS 2022 Winter Symposium: The Manhattan Project Turns 80: Reflections on the Nuclear Age

Beyond the White House: The First Lady in Film, Fiction, and Culture

This edited collection seeks to explore the representation of the First Lady in a range of different texts and media. The collection aims to examine the President’s wife in a purely cultural context by investigating the ways in which she has been represented, embodied, characterised and commemorated in film, fiction, memoir, photography and portraiture, television, theatre, education, museum studies, fashion, and social media. Beyond the White House is an original work that makes use of cultural interpretation to reconfigure the figure of the First Lady as a culturally authoritative individual possessing the ability to sway, change, inspire, and manipulate public attention and opinion. Moving away from biographies and histories, this is the first volume of its kind to consider the representation of the First Lady figure through the prism of popular culture – and therefore consider her impact upon ‘cultural politics’ – and the first to regard her as a strategically important socio-cultural […]

CfP: 3rd HELAAS Young Scholar Symposium: Sharing Critical Testimonies of Wellness in Times of Crisis (February 2022)

Call for Papers 3rd Young Scholar Symposium: Sharing Critical Testimonies of Wellness in Times of Crisis February 2022 Various interpretations of what constitutes health and the normal functioning of human beings have been around even before the Hippocratic “break from divine notions of health” (Green). The most prevalent ones, like Christopher Boorse’sfamous theory of health, define health via negativa as the absence of disease and sub/dysfunction. However, an alternative, positive view of health, partially powered by interdisciplinary investigations of conditions in which people function for sustained periods of time under other than “normal circumstances” (Boorse 7–8), has claimed the spotlight in the past few decades. Moreover, a critical turning point along the millenia-long trajectory of health discourse in the West, the lack of value neutrality in dominant definitions of health, and of the practices these definitions underpin and legitimize, has been emphasized in recent years. On the broad tracks of […]

Longing and Belonging: The 11th International Conference on Eugene O’Neill

As we head into the 20s of the 21st century, we mark the centennials of key O’Neill plays that introduced his voice to a wider audience. Beyond the Horizon premiered on Broadway in 1920 and ushered in a uniquely American tragic form. The Emperor Jones also opened on Broadway in 1920 and was a work that both experimented with emerging expressionist theatrical techniques and broke the color line on Broadway. The Hairy Ape, staged by the Provincetown Players in 1922, criticized capitalist structures and pointed out the fragility and fallibility of the American Dream. Tapping into the zeitgeist of the early 1920s, a time when rapid changes in technology and industry, sudden shifts in workplace environments, and clashes between and among individuals based on differences of race, class, and gender swirled around the cultural and societal ether, O’Neill’s works reflected the longing and belonging that permeated the contemporary culture. A […]

Bookable-Space African-American Lit-Literary Salon with Cadwell Turnball

An engaging evening with readings, Q&A, and discussion with Cadwell Turnball.   Funded by a US Embassy Small Grant, Bookable-Space African-American Lit-Literary Salon is a monthly event. Each month, we'll feature a book written by an African American author.  On the first Friday of each month, the author will join us in Zoom to read us engaging stories from their wonderful book, talk about the writing/themes/influences for the book, and answer questions about writing, process, and/or their publishing path. The events are ideal for readers who enjoy and/or are interested in: fiction, contemporary fiction, American studies, American literature, African-American studies, African-American literature, English literature, and well-told stories. Bookable-Space African American Lit Literary Salon promotes and expects a non-judgmental and supportive attitude from participants. If you’re interested in joining, would like to learn more, or are an author interested in being a salon guest, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. […]

CfP: ANZASA: American Crisis/American Renewal? (November 2021)

American Crisis/American Renewal? Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association Conference November 24-26, 2021 Hosted by Macquarie School of Social Sciences Online via Zoom   Recognizing the multiple challenges confronting the United States, and the academy, during the early twenty-first century, we invite proposals that reflect on the theme of “American Crisis/American Renewal?” All scholars working in the field of American studies – or whose work considers the place of American history, literature, culture, politics, or foreign policy in global or transnational contexts – are invited to submit abstracts for panels or individual papers to Chris Dixon (chris.dixon@mq.edu.au) by 17 September 2021. As always, postgraduate students are particularly encouraged to attend, both by presenting their work to the conference and/or by participating in a postgraduate workshop that will be held on the first day of the conference. Individual presentations that are not part of a proposed panel will be allocated […]

CfP: IAAS PG Conference: “The (Hi)stories We Create: Narratives of Exceptionalism, Ideology, and Resilience”

In November 1621 colonists in Massachusetts celebrated a year of survival and their first harvest with a feast that has since been called The First Thanksgiving. The feast was a supposed celebration of resilience after hardship. It was not until 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War and with the nation divided, that this feast was enshrined as a national holiday and a touchstone of American tradition and ideology: a story of togetherness projected over the realities of division, exceptionalism, genocide, and slavery. Now, four hundred years later, the story of the First Thanksgiving both provides comfort in another time of hardship while also revealing a depth of narrative ideology and mythology which obfuscates the ideological construction of modern day American nations. In the narrative of the US, in particular, at home and abroad, we see an increased awareness and attention to historical and contemporary situations that reveal […]

Enduring Colonialism: Empire and Landscapes in Dialogue

Landscape Research Group is delighted to be able to announce the date for this hugely exciting and important online event exploring the long-lasting physical and cultural impacts of empire on the landscape. We have invited three renowned academics and authors who have written extensively about colonisation’s effects on the landscape in different parts of the world from varying perspectives.  They will be discussing and comparing how landscapes and buildings express empires’ power relationships and their enduring legacy, from conquest and dispossession, both in the colonies and metropole. The panellists are: Professor Jill H Casid, a historian, theorist and practicing artist based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Her contributions to the transdisciplinary field of visual studies include Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization (Minnesota, 2005) and Scenes of Projection: Recasting the Enlightenment Subject (Minnesota, 2015). Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA, Saree Makdisi is the author of Romantic Imperialism (Cambridge University Press, 1998), Palestine Inside […]

CfP: The US Antimonopoly Tradition in Global Perspective (December 2021)

Rothermere American Institute University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

The US Antimonopoly Tradition in Global Perspective The news media is currently awash with articles, op-eds, and think-pieces on monopoly, antitrust, and democracy’s fraught relationship with big corporations in general, and with Big Tech in particular. President Biden’s Executive Order Promoting Competition in the American Economy, issued on 9 July 2021, prompted a new wave of commentary on this topic. Writing in the New York Times, the distinguished labour historian Nelson Lichtenstein traced the lineage of Biden’s antitrust initiative all the way back to the Boston Tea Party and to abolitionists’ attacks on the slave power. “The nation’s antimonopoly tradition,” he wrote, “arises once more.” Much of this commentary, however, is resolutely national in its framing. It presents antimonopoly’s history almost as if it were hermetically sealed, and as such impervious to the global character of capitalism. Americans, of course, are not the only people around the world worried about […]

Funding: The Philip Davies Fellowship at the British Library

This award of £6,000 is offered by the Eccles Centre for American Studies to help support individuals wishing to conduct research on US politics at the British Library for a period of 3 to 6 months. The deadline for applications is 30 September 2021. The Philip Davies Fellowship supports a researcher to conduct bi-partisan research on politics in the United States of America, predominantly using the collections of the British Library but also those of other UK institutions (such as the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, home of the bulk of the Philip and Rosamund Davies US Elections Campaigns Archive). In honour of Professor Davies’ work building American Studies groups in the UK, the Fellowship focuses on supporting work that considers the significance of political dialogue, be that in local, national or international contexts and can include literary, film, art, or other areas of study with a […]

Change in the Postwar World

Registration is now open for 'Change in the Postwar World', an online PGR and Early Career conference to take place on Friday October 1st, exploring a variety of topics in political, intellectual and cultural history since 1945. In particular, papers covering American intervention in El Salvador, the impact of the 1970s and 1980s on New York City literature, and McCarthyism in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, will be of interest to HOTCUS members. To register to attend the conference for free, sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/.../change-in-the-postwar.... The full schedule can be viewed here (https://docs.google.com/.../1lUtrYV2QsMr0M5mWkzCi8NE.../edit), or via our Twitter @postwarchange, where you can also keep up to date with the latest from the conference. We look forward to seeing you on October 1st! An interdisciplinary research conference for PG and early-career researchers on significant cultural, political and social change after WWII About this event As the world slowly emerges from the COVID-19 […]

27th Annual BrANCH Conference (October 2021)

The University of Warwick Coventry, United Kingdom

27th Annual BrANCH Conference University of Warwick, 8-10 October 2021   Peter Parish Memorial Lecture: Professor Vivien Miller (Nottingham) Vitriol Throwing in Victorian America. BrANCH Keynote: Elaine Frantz (Kent State University): Title: The Nineteenth-Century Arrest as Trauma and Performance. Saturday New Directions in History Roundtable : History of Emotions Jo Cohen (QMUL): A Feeling for Property: Writing Histories of Emotions and Capitalism Tom Wright (Sussex): Charisma and the Problem of Crowd Emotions Iain Flood (Newcastle University): Postbellum Missouri: Individual Emotions and Political Change   This has been an unusual year (or has it been two?), and we are so excited at the prospect of holding BrANCH2021 at Warwick, and in person. The Covid situation remains ongoing and subject to change, so please be aware that it may not be possible to refund the full cost of the conference if travel restrictions are put in place from outside the UK. For […]

6th International Conference on American Drama and Theater – “‘Game Over!’: U.S. Drama and Theater and the End(s) of an American Idea(l)”

The Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, co-sponsored by the Spanish universities of Cádiz and Sevilla and the University of Lorraine in France, and working in partnership with the American Theater and Drama Society (ATDS), the International Susan Glaspell Society, the Arthur Miller Society, the Eugene O’Neill Society, and RADAC (Recherches sur les arts dramatiques anglophones contemporains), is announcing a call for papers for the conference “‘Game Over!’: U.S. Drama and Theater and the End(s) of an American Idea(l)” to be held from 1 to 3 June 2022 at La Cristalera, located in the accessible northern mountains of Madrid. This 6th International Conference on American Drama and Theater will be dedicated to the study of ends and new beginnings, games and gaming, players and playing, especially during, but not limited to, the current coronavirus pandemic. The five previous conferences were held in Málaga, 2000; Málaga, 2004; Cádiz, 2009; Sevilla, 2012; and Nancy (France), 2018; topics included […]